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A little bit of googling seems to indicate that the total household wealth in the US was $86 trillion as of 2015, and there are 127 million households in the US

A little bit of googling seems to indicate that the total household wealth in the US was $86 trillion as of 2015, and there are 127 million households in the US, so the average household has $700k net worth. If you have more than that (and many people in tech do), then you are a beneficiary of inequality, not a victim of it, and you don’t have the right to whine about the billionaires hoarding all the wealth at your expense. A surprising number of upper middle class yuppies love to act like they are downtrodden proles just because they have less money than Jeff Bezos.

PierceJoy 7y ago
Now do it with the median.
- esoterica 7y ago
  The point of using the average is to evaluate the hypothetical where all the wealth in the country were distributed evenly (and many of the people who claim to be victims of inequality would actually be worse off in a truly equal society).
  - 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
    The average wealth is the 84th percentile wealth. If everyone became worth $677k, 84% of people would be better off (inflation aside).
    - esoterica 7y ago
      That is true, but people in the 90th, and 95th and sometimes the 99th percentiles still complain about how oppressed they are because billionaires exist.
defterGoose 7y ago
As always, someone has failed to understand that averages are a poor statistical indicator of, well, anything.
- esoterica 7y ago
  As always, someone has failed to exercise basic reading comprehension. See my other comment.
  - lr4444lr 7y ago
    You are not inherently a "beneficiary" simply because you're coming out marginally ahead in an unfair system anymore than a pretty girl at Auschwitz used as a rape slave living for 1 year instead of 1 week average for plain girls before being gassed is a "beneficiary" of inequality because she lives longer. Yeah, I went Godwin on you. Your original comment was unnecessarily confrontational against people as a class who have not only done nothing wrong, but many of whom may be actively trying to fix things.
    - esoterica 7y ago
      Hahahaha I point out that yuppies like you have a hysterical oppression complex and you respond by comparing yourself to an Auschwitz rape slave. Thanks for proving my point in the most spectacular manner possible. I'm going to undignify myself by walking through your example anyway: if the crime that billionaires commit is perpetuating an unequal distribution of wealth then you are, then the counterfactual setup is a more equal distribution of wealth, under which you would be worse off than you are. Therefore you are a beneficiary of inequality. The Nazis, on the other hand, were committing genocide, and the counterfactual is no genocide. Someone who gets genocided more slowly than average would still be worse off than if there were no genocide, therefore they are not a beneficiary of the holocaust. QED.
      - lr4444lr 7y ago
        "Yuppie"? Guess again: by your own stated cutoff dollar amount, I'm in the "victim" group. Unless you want to rethink that cutoff.
turk73 7y ago
I see you got appropriately downvoted for saying that. I wanted to add my $.02 anyways: I started at or near the bottom, very blue collar, lower middle class. I've had a couple of lucky breaks, but mostly just gutted out every day, working hard. I worked my way through college and grad school and have been paying dues pretty much the whole time. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't have been an engineer. I would have gone into sales and just been one of "those guys." I don't see how I am the beneficiary of so-called inequality. I know it is fashionable to accuse white men of this. Really? Because I was pretty much dirt poor and not at all well connected when I started. I realize a lot of people are less well off than me. My compassion is only tempered by the reality that I set aside a monumental amount of comfort and fun to better myself. My observation is that C-level execs are far too highly compensated as compared to the rest of us. The cult of personality is behind it. The truth is that there are thousands of qualified managers out there who could achieve as good or better results as all these celebrity CEOs. It's purely politics and exercise of power.
lkbm 7y ago
So, your point seems partly that rich people should stop pretending their poor. I agree. But most of what you said is very problematic. > then you are a beneficiary of inequality, not a victim of it, and you don’t have the right to whine about the billionaires hoarding all the wealth at your expense. "Whining" about behavior that harms society is not a right we lose by engaging in that behavior. It's an obligation, and you can't get out of it by being rich. But perhaps more relevantly, there's much be more to someone's well-being than their net worth. I'd be better off if crime were lower, if we had more scientists figuring out how to make my phone battery last longer (or curing cancers; pick your priority). But instead, so many potential Einsteins had nutritional deficiencies as children? (Fun fact: the poorest 20% of kids had cognitive gains equivalent to a full standard deviation when given multivitamins[0]). Maybe you make it past that. Cool, but oops, you have to drop out of high school so you can work to support their families. (I've personally known quite a few students who dropped out for precisely this reason.) People with good education and a safety net, tend not to get addicted to drugs, or commit violent crimes, or break into homes, because they don't have to. I want that for all people. That would not just improve their well-being. It would improve my well-being. Having a society of healthy, happy, smart, educated people with food and housing security would make my life better. People who are financially well-off need to "whine" about this shit until it's fixed. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10706232 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10706232

PierceJoy 7y ago

Now do it with the median.

esoterica 7y ago
The point of using the average is to evaluate the hypothetical where all the wealth in the country were distributed evenly (and many of the people who claim to be victims of inequality would actually be worse off in a truly equal society).
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
  The average wealth is the 84th percentile wealth. If everyone became worth $677k, 84% of people would be better off (inflation aside).
  - esoterica 7y ago
    That is true, but people in the 90th, and 95th and sometimes the 99th percentiles still complain about how oppressed they are because billionaires exist.

defterGoose 7y ago

As always, someone has failed to understand that averages are a poor statistical indicator of, well, anything.

esoterica 7y ago
As always, someone has failed to exercise basic reading comprehension. See my other comment.
- lr4444lr 7y ago
  You are not inherently a "beneficiary" simply because you're coming out marginally ahead in an unfair system anymore than a pretty girl at Auschwitz used as a rape slave living for 1 year instead of 1 week average for plain girls before being gassed is a "beneficiary" of inequality because she lives longer. Yeah, I went Godwin on you. Your original comment was unnecessarily confrontational against people as a class who have not only done nothing wrong, but many of whom may be actively trying to fix things.
  - esoterica 7y ago
    Hahahaha I point out that yuppies like you have a hysterical oppression complex and you respond by comparing yourself to an Auschwitz rape slave. Thanks for proving my point in the most spectacular manner possible. I'm going to undignify myself by walking through your example anyway: if the crime that billionaires commit is perpetuating an unequal distribution of wealth then you are, then the counterfactual setup is a more equal distribution of wealth, under which you would be worse off than you are. Therefore you are a beneficiary of inequality. The Nazis, on the other hand, were committing genocide, and the counterfactual is no genocide. Someone who gets genocided more slowly than average would still be worse off than if there were no genocide, therefore they are not a beneficiary of the holocaust. QED.
    - lr4444lr 7y ago
      "Yuppie"? Guess again: by your own stated cutoff dollar amount, I'm in the "victim" group. Unless you want to rethink that cutoff.

turk73 7y ago

I see you got appropriately downvoted for saying that. I wanted to add my $.02 anyways: I started at or near the bottom, very blue collar, lower middle class. I've had a couple of lucky breaks, but mostly just gutted out every day, working hard. I worked my way through college and grad school and have been paying dues pretty much the whole time. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't have been an engineer. I would have gone into sales and just been one of "those guys." I don't see how I am the beneficiary of so-called inequality. I know it is fashionable to accuse white men of this. Really? Because I was pretty much dirt poor and not at all well connected when I started. I realize a lot of people are less well off than me. My compassion is only tempered by the reality that I set aside a monumental amount of comfort and fun to better myself. My observation is that C-level execs are far too highly compensated as compared to the rest of us. The cult of personality is behind it. The truth is that there are thousands of qualified managers out there who could achieve as good or better results as all these celebrity CEOs. It's purely politics and exercise of power.

lkbm 7y ago

So, your point seems partly that rich people should stop pretending their poor. I agree. But most of what you said is very problematic. > then you are a beneficiary of inequality, not a victim of it, and you don’t have the right to whine about the billionaires hoarding all the wealth at your expense. "Whining" about behavior that harms society is not a right we lose by engaging in that behavior. It's an obligation, and you can't get out of it by being rich. But perhaps more relevantly, there's much be more to someone's well-being than their net worth. I'd be better off if crime were lower, if we had more scientists figuring out how to make my phone battery last longer (or curing cancers; pick your priority). But instead, so many potential Einsteins had nutritional deficiencies as children? (Fun fact: the poorest 20% of kids had cognitive gains equivalent to a full standard deviation when given multivitamins[0]). Maybe you make it past that. Cool, but oops, you have to drop out of high school so you can work to support their families. (I've personally known quite a few students who dropped out for precisely this reason.) People with good education and a safety net, tend not to get addicted to drugs, or commit violent crimes, or break into homes, because they don't have to. I want that for all people. That would not just improve their well-being. It would improve my well-being. Having a society of healthy, happy, smart, educated people with food and housing security would make my life better. People who are financially well-off need to "whine" about this shit until it's fixed. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10706232 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10706232